Norton’s hubris apropos of the I.R.S. had interrupted an arc of life that had been clearly defined since he’d taken Economics 000, as a freshman. Leaving the prison, on a flight from Detroit to Denver, he had awakened from a brief snooze with the distinct feeling that the plane had stopped for a few moments in midair. No one else in the cabin appeared to have noticed it, but he was quite sure that it had happened.
He stopped and did a casual three-sixty in front of a small lingerie shop where everything in the window was a ghastly shade of blue, the color of veins beneath skin. Now he remembered that he had left the car with the valet at the hotel across the square, in case Laura wanted to have dinner and he decided to stay the night.